Programmable Video uses WebRTC, a standard set of browser APIs for real-time audio and video in the browser. Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari web browsers all support WebRTC APIs, but each has its own nuances.

When it comes to video encoding, Chrome, Edge, and Firefox support two video codecs: VP8 and H.264. Safari only supports H.264 today. This means that other browsers and mobile apps must send H.264-encoded video if they want Safari users to see the video tracks they share.

Our goal is to make it so that you don't need to worry about codec selection, but there are a few things you'll want to know as you plan support for Safari 11 in your application.

If your app uses Peer-to-Peer Rooms, the codec selection should be seamless: Chrome and Firefox both support H.264, and will automatically send and receive H.264 video tracks to any Safari 11 users who join the Room.

If you ship a native mobile version of your app and use Peer-to-Peer Rooms, you'll need to use version 2.0.0-preview1 of our iOS or Android SDK to send and receive H.264 in a Peer-to-Peer Room. Earlier versions of our native SDKs will not be able to send or receive video to Safari 11 devices, because they do not support H.264.

You can use the codec preferences API to force the browser to use a specific video codec.

If your app uses Group Rooms, you'll need to make a decision about how you want to support Safari 11.

In most cases, you'll want Safari 11 to be able to receive every video track shared in the Room. To do this, you can force all Participants to send only H.264-encoded video by creating the Room with the option VideoCodecs=H264:

We've added support for H.264 codec in our Android and iOS SDKs starting at version 2.0.0-preview1. If you ship a native mobile version of your app, and you want it to be able to talk to Safari 11, you'll need to update to 2.0.0-preview1 or higher.

Keep in mind that if you create Rooms with only H.264 support as described above, apps running earlier versions of our mobile SDKs will not be able to connect.

If you're building a video app for Safari users, we recommend downloading the Safari Technology Preview. The Technology Preview release has some additional options that make development and debugging a bit easier–you can find the options under the menu Develop > WebRTC.

A couple of useful options:

Enabling Media Capture on Insecure Sites lets you capture audio and video from the microphone and camera without using HTTPS.

Use Mock Capture Devices simulates audio and video input in the browser, which can come in handy for troubleshooting or automated testing.

Read more about developing WebRTC applications for Safari 11 on the WebKit blog.

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